UDUPI, September 12th: Sushma Swaraj, says that everything Lord Krishna did was to achieve comprehensive and inclusive welfare of everyone in the world. Lord Rama was known for observing principles of righteousness.

LUCKNOW: Overcoming opposition from his family and community, a Muslim man left his ancestral profession of singing qawwalis to sing Hindu hymns in the temples of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. Today he is much sought after by devotees there.

For Rojan Ali, 55, a farmer living in Chaubeypur town of Varanasi district, some 250 km from here, singing was his way of reaching out to god.

PIPRI VILLAGE, India — Two very different recent scenes from India: At a power breakfast in New Delhi for many of the country’s corporate leaders and top economic officials, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee declared that India had “weathered the storm” of the global economic crisis and was witnessing “green shoots” in industry and services that signaled a return to more rapid growth by next year.

A treasured piece at the Dutch national museum - a supposed moon rock from the first manned lunar landing - is nothing more than petrified wood, curators say.

It was given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo-11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969.

Recent studies found that, on average, Jews and Hindus are the most educated religious groups in the United States, with similar economic structures and the highest retention rate of believers. Yet there is little exposure of one faiths to the other. On June 14, a Hindu-Jewish interfaith meeting in New York and Washington helped the two faith groups make each other’s acquaintance.

Did Krishna exist? Most certainly, says Dr Manish Pandit, a nuclear medicine physician who teaches in the United Kingdom, proffering astronomical, archaeological, linguistic and oral evidences to make his case.

"I used to think of Krishna is a part of Hindu myth and mythology. Imagine my surprise when I came across Dr Narhari Achar (a professor of physics at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, in the US) and his research in 2004 and 2005. He had done the dating of the Mahabharata war using astronomy. I immediately tried to corroborate all his research using the regular Planetarium software and I came to the same conclusions [as him]," Pandit says.

BHUBANESWAR: The all-conquering members of the Oriya dance troupe 'Prince' -- comprising daily wage earners -- may now justly expect a reception fit for kings.

Since the moment Bollywood star Rani Mukherjee announced that the dancers from far-flung Ganjam district in Orissa were the winners of the TV reality show, "India's Got Talent", everybody and his brother in the state is doing a jig.

On a summer visit back to the farm here where I grew up, I think I figured out the central problem with modern industrial agriculture. It’s not just that it produces unhealthy food, mishandles waste and overuses antibiotics in ways that harm us all.

More fundamentally, it has no soul.

Bangalore, Aug 28 (PTI) A documentary that explores the archaeological, astronomical and other evidences to claim the existence of Lord Krishna is set to be dubbed in eight Indian languages besides Spanish and German.

"Krishna: History or Myth", made by UK-based nuclear medicine physician Manish Pandit captures the beliefs of Krishna worshippers on one hand and juxtaposes it with archaeological, historical and astronomical evidences on the other, to make the point that he "existed in reality and not merely in the imagination of devotees and scripture writers.

When it comes to getting things done, multitasking is a bane not a blessing, according to Stanford University researchers.

While web users may be simultaneously listening to iPods, watching online video, instant messaging, checking email and firing off Facebook updates, they likely aren't doing any of it well.

For decades, farmers, lawn care workers and professional green thumbs have relied on the popular weed killer atrazine to protect their crops, golf courses and manicured lawns.

But atrazine often washes into water supplies and has become among the most common contaminants in American reservoirs and other sources of drinking water.

America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on Earth.

I wish my memory worked differently. I’d like to be able to conjure up an accurate image of my consciousness from, say, 25 years ago. You know what 25 years means: No cellphones, no e-mail, no Internet, no social networking, and only the most primitive of personal computers. What I want to answer is a single question: Was I as addicted to the future then as I seem to be now?

Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast. They read the newspaper and competed only with the television for the attention of their two teenage sons.

That was so last century. Today, Mr. Gude wakes at around 6 a.m. to check his work e-mail and his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The two boys, Cole and Erik, start each morning with text messages, video games and Facebook.

Tarrytown, N.Y. - If the hardship of growing vegetables and fruits in the Northeast has made anything clear, it’s that the list of what can go wrong in the field is a very long one.

We wait all year for warmer weather and longer days. Once we get them, it seems new problems for farmers rise to the surface every week: overnight temperatures plunging close to freezing, early disease, aphid attacks. Another day, another problem.

Married people tend to be healthier than single people. But what happens when a marriage ends?

New research shows that when married people become single again, whether by divorce or a spouse’s death, they experience much more than an emotional loss. Often they suffer a decline in physical health from which they never fully recover, even if they remarry.

Adelaide clinical psychologist Rita Princi said girls and boys were being exposed to things such as sexy music videos, women's magazines and teenage concepts way too young.

This included teen-themed movies and TV shows such as High School Musical and Hannah Montana, huge among 6 to 8-year-olds, and suggestive music videos shown on weekend mornings.

I am standing in Dilli Haat, New Delhi's popular open-air handicrafts market, feeling a little guilty. My usual uniform for a hot summer evening — jeans, sandals and a comfortable cotton tunic — is putting people out of business.

"People in Delhi have abandoned their own traditional clothing," says Bilal Ahmed, 24, a weaver who works for his family business in Jammu and Kashmir. Ahmed and his family specialize in Kadhai work, a type of embroidery. "We have started making more suits and shirts than saris," he says. "People don't buy saris anymore. Now they buy jeans."

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70 percent of the antibiotics used in the USA country are fed to farm animals. These animals do not receive these drugs the way humans do — as discrete short-term doses. Agricultural antibiotics are a regular feed supplement intended to increase growth and lessen the chance of infection in crowded, industrial farms.

Genetic research indicates that Australian Aborigines initially arrived via south Asia. Researchers have found telltale mutations in modern-day Indian populations that are exclusively shared by Aborigines.

Dr Raghavendra Rao worked with a team of researchers from the Anthropological Survey of India to sequence 966 complete mitochondrial DNA genomes from Indian 'relic populations'.